LETTERS: HMO COST-CUTTING IS A WAKE-UP CALL

To the editor:

The front-page article about HMO cost-cutting should be a wake-up call to anyone with any concern about health care. Are we supposed to be pleased when people die to save money? This is the direction socialized medicine takes, as evidenced everywhere it has been practiced. Now we can see it here.

Approximately two-thirds of Medicare funds are expended on recipients in their last six months of life. Following the story's logic, we can save Medicare by simply not making that "ultimately futile" effort. Expanding that to all health-care services, we could probably save billions.

Of course, the next logical step is to save even more by making quality-of-life decisions. Why do we spend hundreds of thousands in futile attempts to save preemies, crack babies, severely injured, burned et al? Let's get answers to all these questions before the reporters of the world blithely inform us how pleasant and beneficial these non-treatments can be.

Who do you think should make decisions about treatment? Should it be some government panel of academic physicians? How about financially trained MBAs? Do you want either of these groups making health-care decisions about your parent, your spouse, your children? Why keep them alive a mere six months more when you can save us all money by pulling the plug today?

The HMO patients died at a mere 8 percent higher rate than the fee-for-service patients. What happens when government learns it can reduce the Medicare budget 8 percent by forcing all Medicare patients into HMOs? Do you want to be one of the 8 percent? How many of that 8 percent might have recovered and resumed a normal life?

Yes, there are too many questions. The happy acceptance displayed in the story is frightening. That article should have been an indictment of managed care. AARP should be screaming for the dismantling of socialized medicine -- Medicare. Instead, they scream for more. Free enterprise works far better than any other system -- even to ensure the best health care.

GERALD L. NICHOLSON, Administrator

Orthopaedic Associates

Cape Girardeau